


i will kindle a fire in the wall

by satellites (brella)



Category: Morning Glories
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 07:48:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade Ellsworth: arson in five acts, tragedy in one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will kindle a fire in the wall

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by Cat at [my LJ ficathon](http://kidiots.livejournal.com/25057.html).  
>  _Jade; then I set fire to our bed._

**i.**

Fire hadn't always been a preoccupation for you. Your dreams used to be soccer fields, victoriously skinned knees, orange cream pops on the porch, learning how to drive the pickup, Christmas Morning mass. You used to be a good girl, praying the Lord your soul to keep and getting grass stains on your elbows; you used to be bad at science, and you used to write in rhyming couplets. You used to climb trees, fall out of them, fall asleep in the branches until your mother came out to chastise you for missing dinner, worrying her sick. The nail polish color you'd pick at sleepovers had been bright blue, like the sky smack in the middle of July.

Now you just want to burn it all down, stick your fingers between the threshing flames until you finally _feel_ something again. You hate fond memories, because she's there instead of here with you; she's teaching you to ride a bike instead of coming to pick you up from the soccer practice you're skipping because you quit the team. The accident had fucked up your right knee anyway; goalies don't have fucked-up knees and dead moms and straight white lines on their wrists.

So one night, at the end of the summer, you go out to the lumber mill that kids throw rocks at and graffiti up with ugly colors, and you pour the bottle of kerosene for the pickup all over the floor and the walls and stand outside when you flick the match in. The fire swallows it whole. Your skin feels swollen from the heat. Your gnashing teeth are distorting the tear streaks and it only gets worse when the Sheriff shows up with a shocked look on his face. Church girls don't set fires. Your grades might not be perfect, but you're a good kid, a faithful sweetheart who always sold the most Girl Scout cookies and got away with fistfights on account of her cute freckled face. Good kids don't _do_ this.

_Look at all the shit I'm doing, Mom. Get over here. Get over here so you can tell me to knock it off. Get over here and be ashamed. Be ashamed instead of dead._

 

 

 

 

**ii.**

You set a lot of things on fire. Report cards, referrals to the school counselor, the program from your mom's memorial service, all the photos of yourself where you're smiling. You escalate, you ruminate; you spit in front of the church and burn patchouli incense and don't come out for dinner. You forget to eat sometimes because of how hard you're praying; you pray until your fingernails dig into your knuckles and your jaw goes numb from being clenched for so long. _Bring her back, God. I'll do anything. I'll do anything. Please, God; break the rules for me. I don't wanna wait 'til Heaven to tell her I'm sorry for not reminding her._

God doesn't answer. God's got better things to do than save you from drowning, you guess; or maybe he isn't even there to save you at all. So the next thing you burn is your Bible.

 _Bless you today and always, my darling, divine girl_ , the inscription on the inside says. _With eternal love, Your Devoted Ma_.

You haven't seen Jimmy cry in years, but damn if he doesn't let it loose when he sees that book burning in your wastebasket. He goes from gripping you at the shoulders and shaking you and shouting that you gotta stop all of this to crushing you into an embrace and sobbing into your hair, and suddenly you're both little kids again, scared of copperheads and the cracks in the walls that look like they move at night. You fist your fingers into your big brother's shirt and scream that you just want your mama, you want your mama, you'll never want anything else as long as you live if you can just get her back.

"She ain't coming back," Jimmy whimpers, his broad shoulders slumping. "She ain't coming back, Jade; I don't—"

That's when you shove him off. You shove him off and run for the door, fling open the screen and sprint barefoot over the dirt drive and down past the corn field onto the main road. You don't know where you're going. _Slow down, Jadey; we can talk about this, sweetheart_ , your mama says in your ear, and just because you know she can't hear you anymore, you scare the town awake with how loud you scream, " _Shut up_!"

 

 

 

 

**iii.**

A problem child, they start calling you. A delinquent, a special case. Troubled. Just needs somebody to talk to. Could become a homicidal maniac if all this new research into the psychological triad is true. Sometimes, you just want friends. You want all your friends to have dead moms, too, so they'll know what it's fucking _like_ ; so they'll look at you with empathy, instead of with pity, instead of with _fear_. They're scared of you, scared of what you can do with a match. All the boys step out of your way; all the girls whisper in your vicinity and avoid your eye.

You paint your nails black now, but you chew them so mercilessly that you might as well not even bother; they're usually raw little stubs and it hurts to touch things. You cut your hair with a pair of your own safety scissors at three in the morning, watching the blazing red lie in a pile in the sink, crying until your eyeliner sends spiderwebbing black down your cheeks. You hate your face. You look so much like her.

"Jade, I know these are probably empty words by now," Marcus Bellamy, the new English teacher, tells you gently after class one day, eight months after, "But you can talk to me anytime. If you ever need any help or guidance, you can just ask me; that's what I'm here for. That and making sure you know your prepositions."

You touch yourself in the bathtub with the door locked and all the lights off except for one candle and think about him. It's so fucked up; you're _so fucked up_ , but having dirty thoughts about your teacher distracts you most of the time from having thoughts about your mom's hands on the steering wheel until you just want to cut your arm open and forget what it feels like to hurt this much between the ribs.

You only set fire to the dead autumn leaves now. Your hair hits your shoulders in uneven clumps and you've got zits on your chin and you draw your eyeliner thicker, and sometimes you follow Marcus home, instead of walking to the cemetery.

 

 

 

**iv.**

You forget the compulsion to immolate, for a little while. You stop dreaming about setting fire to yourself until you find your mom's smiling face in your own dirty ashes; you start dreaming about Marcus shutting the classroom door and showing you just how much help he wants to be. You always take uncomfortably hot showers, scalding your skin just slightly before you have to jerk away and cry a little; you stop praying and you stop going to church and you stop asking God for favors He'll never come through on. Your friends stop talking to you. You stop spending your weekends in jail cells, because the cops took away your matches and told your dad to keep you under curfew.

Either way, the fire kinda fades. You go from being pissed off and bitter to just being sad, and that's worse. You lie in bed and hate yourself because you think you want to fuck your English teacher and you think you'll do as many horrible things as you have to to get your mom to just climb out of her grave and put you in your place. Sooner or later, she's gonna have to start paying attention.

 

 

 

**v.**

"You piece of shit," you snarl like an animal, slapping him across the face. "You piece of fucking _shit_ ; you rotten fucking _prick_! I swear to God, you make me wanna set you on fire!"

Ike rubs your red hand mark on his cheek and smiles through the blood from where you made him bite his lip with the force of your swing. Your heart is a forest fire when you look at him, consuming everything that touches it, all of the little animals, all of the open flowers. You are choking on your own smoke.

"Well, _well_ ," he drawls. His throat is open; you want to suck on the side of it, leave fingerprints on his most naked parts. "All right. Deal. Your place or mine?"

 

_I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?_

"Why's the Bible always so hung up on fire?" you ask your mother. Your hair is in two braids and your arm is in a hot pink cast. She strokes your scalp and hums pensively, holding you closer to her chest.

"Fire keeps us alive," she answers after a time. "Fire keeps us warm, keeps us strong. But if we let it loose, it destroys."

"God sure makes a lot of dangerous things, for saying he loves us all so much," you comment with a snort.

Your mother laughs. It fills every dark corner, scares away every monster.

"What would life be without the dangerous things?" she chuckles. "Learn to laugh danger in the face, sweetie. It makes things a whole lot easier." She kisses the crown of your head, tucks you in and turns the light off, and her silhouette in the doorway is edged in gold from the kitchen. "You sleep well, silly girl. See you tomorrow."

You would always dream about growing up to be just like her, growing up to rule the world and take away all of the evil in it. In the morning, you brush your teeth for exactly sixty seconds, and that's a start.

You always burn your toast.


End file.
